Year: 2012

Philip Ellender, president of government affairs for Koch Industries, charges in a letter to Obama campaign manager Jim Messina that President Obama and his campaign are fostering “an effort to chill free speech and squelch dissent.”

President Obama has repeatedly proposed higher taxes as a means to ameliorate the country’s unsustainable budget deficits. Higher tax revenues, he has argued, will help the federal government pay down the national debt.

Concerns about Iran’s purportedly peaceful nuclear program reached an all-time high Friday, when the United Nations censured the regime for refusing to grant inspectors access to several clandestine sites that are suspected of housing a nuclear weapons program. In its latest update on Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concluded that “Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities” as it has been ordered to do under international law.

A senior Chinese communist party leader who dispatched armed forces to a U.S. consulate to head off the defection of a former police chief was shown on state-run television this week, a sign he has survived allegations of corruption. Bo Xilai, Communist Party leader in China’s Chongqing city, was shown attending a meeting of the ruling Politburo and sitting next to a senior military official.